1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to apparatuses and methods for controlling printing and computer programs. In particular, the present invention relates to an apparatus and method for controlling printing, a printing system, and a computer program that directly performs printing on a printing device from a web server.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a printing system comprising a personal computer (PC) and a printer, executing a printer driver for controlling a print process (a program for controlling printing) on the PC transmits print data from the program to the printer and instructs the printer to print the data. If the processing of the print data is stopped due to an error, the program typically transmits error information to the printer by attaching it to the print data (see, for example, Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. H07-72990).
Such error information typically includes information indicating details of printing requests, error numbers, error locations, and files associated with errors. The printer outputs the received print data and the received error information. The above process is performed by, for example, outputting a trace dump in a PostScript printer or outputting error histories in a facsimile.
In the trace dump outputting, the error information is output after the print data that was originally requested is output. Therefore, a user who requests printing does not realize the occurrence of an error until the user receives print matter that is fully output. This operational flow applies to the outputting of error histories in a facsimile. There is a problem in that, since the user does not realize an error has occurred, it is difficult for the user to deal with the error promptly.
In known printing systems, there is also a problem in that it is difficult to determine whether the error information is inserted into a plurality of output print data sets.
To avoid these problems, in a situation where print data is created, when an error occurs, a method of simultaneously displaying the error information with warning dialogues and a method of notifying the user of the occurrence of the error by e-mail are known. However, in a printing system in which printing is directly performed from a web server in an intranet or the Internet by the use of the Internet Printing Protocol (IPP), a client, who makes a printing request, and a web server that receives the request and creates print data, operate in an asynchronous fashion. Therefore, there is a problem in that it is difficult to notify the user of the error information in real time. There is also a problem in that notification by e-mail lacks synchronism.